Newcastle Great Performances Needed Against Relegation Sides

For the third season in a row Newcastle are fighting against relegation, to the dismay of many Newcastle fans.

Joe Kinnear – back for Spurs game on 18th April

And when you look at the tough run-in the club has in the last 10 league games, it’s by no means a certainty that we’ll survive.

We have just a single win and 4 draws in our last 12 league and cup games, and in the league just 6 points from our last 10 games.

So if we continue that form and get 6 points in the last 10 games remaining, we’ll end up with 34 points and be relegated. Last year 36 poionts saw Reading relegated in 3rd bottom place.

Newcastle have 28 points from 28 games and are one point above Blackburn (3rd bottom), level on points with Portsmouth (4th bottom), with a superior goal average, but both teams have a game in hand on the Magpies.

Last year after 28 games Derby had 9 points and Fulham had 19, so things are a lot more crowded at the bottom than last year. Of course Fulham won 4 of their last 5 games last season to escape the drop but it will probably take at least 40 points for safety this year, which would be 4 points more than last time.

The bottom line is Newcastle must win games, as draws will just not get us the points the club needs. Joe Kinnear has said he will come back for the April 18th game at Stoke City, which will be a crucial game, but whether Joe can have input before then to keep the players upbeat and inspired is really not known.

Steve Harper played very well indeed during the run-in last year, and is already showing the same good form this season. Harper thinks the experience most of the team had at the end of last season, when they pulled clear of the relegation zone, with a seven-game unbeaten run, could assist them in this season’s survival.

The away games at Hull City this Saturday, and Stoke on 11th April, along with our three home games against Middlesbrough, Fulham and Portsmouth, are probably the five games we have the best chance of winning, but Harper does not necessarily agree with that view.

“It’s very similar to last season and I didn’t think I would be saying that again.” “But we finished the season well last year and we can do the same this time.”

“People keep talking about the games we’ve got at home, but the away games are just as important.”

“We’ve got winnable games against other teams around us in the table, but we’re not going into the games against Arsenal and Chelsea writing them off.”

“It’s not the attitude we have. We’ve got a point at Manchester United and Chelsea this season and had decent results against the big teams at home in recent years.”

“We can’t sit there and say we’ll get the points here or there, you get them where you can, whoever the opposition are.”

“The performance against Man United at home should give us plenty of encouragement.”

But Steve illustrates in his comments what the Newcastle problem is this year. We play great against teams like Man United and Chelsea, but don’t win, and yet play hopeless against teams like Bolton, Wigan and Hull and get beat.

We need our top performance against the other relegation teams to maximize our chances of survival.

If we can do that we should be OK and if we cannot we’ll probably deserve the drop.

Ed is spot on , this is the third season running we are in a plight, mainly down to the threadbare squad being brutally exposed by injuries. Stan Collymore has an article in the Mirror where he is saying we are certs to get relegated? Must to be too cold to go out dogging.

We can do this. We are not even in the relegation zone and people are writing us off. I believe we can get 12 points on the run-in, and I honestly think we’ll do it.

But people need to get used to the fact that we have the team and managers that we have and that is not going to change. That same group of people outplayed the best team on the planet last Wednesday. Get behind them and help to bring that kind of performance out in all the games coming up.

If we keep fighting relegation season after season it will only be a matter of time before we will finally get relegated… Lets hope we survive this year and then move forward so that we wont end like this again.

if we dont go down this season it will be a miracle,but we will be in the same position next season as long as ashley keeps spending very little money and having a very poor manager,we are in a slow agonizing death.

Stop being so pessimistic! We will stay up, no one has ever doubted the quality of our squad, we have 10 more games left and we have 5 players coming back from injury on 14th March and Beye Beye on 21 March, with all those players even the “know it all” Collimore would manage to keep us in the premiership.

On the topice slow agonizing deaths, I feel like I’ve died slightly inside wasting 3 mins of my life reading Stan’s article. I think Mr Collymore should take up the offer of the IQ test at the bottom. I’d wager it’d make for interesting (!) reading. Do these guys really get paid for writing that sort of stuff? And I used to feel some injustice that they got paid so well for playing. At least he occasionally played well.

What I am confident of is that if we do stay up, this will mark the bottom of the curve. I’m no great fan of what Ashley’s done because it’s let us get too close to relegation. But the long-term plan sets us in the right direction for the first time in many years.

Ash is right – just look what we did against Manure with so many key players out. We’ve got Beye, Nolan, Owen and others all coming back for these key games, and that means we have a better squad than the other teams we’re up against in this relegation battle.

We WILL beat Hull and Stoke. We will also get points against the Spuds, Portsmouth, Smogs and Fulham. I think there are four wins coming and at least two draws.

On the plus side its nice to see the side are “together” at this time. The fight againt Man U was pleasing.

I have advocated that the fans have the same duty to unite – just as they have. It is no coincidence that the teams uplift has coincided with many of the facts the mob claimed to have known are now disproved, and as they take thei bedsheets home things are improving.

From now till the end of the season every %age point make a difference. Time for us all to be Newcastle UNITED.

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health update

My latest bone scans and CAT scans were completed on Wednesday of this week and yesterday I met with my oncologist Dr. Dhruva to look over the results.

The stage four cancer remains stabilized and has not spread any further over the last six months.

I was diagnosed with stage 4 prostate cancer in early 2017 after being in remission for six years.

The cancer metastasized through the bones to different parts of the body and the treatment I am undergoing is hormone treatment.

There is no cure for stage 4 cancer but there are treatments (like Hormone treatment) that attempt to prolong life.

I am upbeat with the results and remain in awe of the doctors and nurses at the Rex Cancer Center here in Raleigh.

It's truly humbling to see how inspiring they are with their patients.

Ed Harrison

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